Though in most discourse I'm better at what I call "rebounds" -- responding to other people's comments -- that's not in any way any kind of motivation for me to not make the Boobies or early comments. There are plenty of times I've dropped in to post just one comment, without even reading the thread, if I feel I've got a little something to add, but don't have enough interest to sit through it. If I got a responce, I'd come back, but otherwise usually not. I often didn't even know where in the thread my comment landed, and didn't care.

There have also been times I was the Weenerser, or a very early one, and even times I did that and stayed around for the whole thread -- just much less commonly, perhaps for the reasons I suggested before. All of the above cases were only a matter of luck, not planning. It's never once occurred to me to wait and see what happens in a thread before deciding to participate. I don't give a wet fart what people I don't know think of me or anything I have to say, unless I'm legitimately wrong, so that's never been a motivating factor. If I feel I've got something to say, I do, and otherwise not. It is, true, though, that a thread is sometimes not interesting until someone says some particular thing, and then I'd jump in. What I don't do is post just for the sake of it. I don't "This" people, unless I'm genuinely very impressed; I don't do it just to show mere agreement, though, and I always try to add something, not just "Ditto!" people. I have a longstanding policy of trying not to add any more to the already burgeoning noise than is really called for, and that's why you may have seen me smacking down zeroes who do that. I also dislike those who cite and repost with no comment: It's just a fancier version of the same thing. I especially hate it when people come in to just shiat on something, without offering anything beyond their personal reaction. I don't care if someone just doesn't like something, and I wouldn't expect them to care if I do or not. It's like little kids saying, "I don't like that!" It's cute when they're two years old -- not after.

I'm not a fan of TF, for a few reasons. Mainly, that the way Fark does it right now, it's just a non-free version of the same, and far too many lunkheads toss out the fiver to feel and (I presume) imagine they look special somehow. Which means that in my (admittedly limited) experience, TF is more of a circle jerk than a group of insiders who are in any noticeable way better to hang out with than liters. To put that in mathematical terms that might be clearer: A large proportion of enjoyable participants are TFers, while a considerably larger proportion of losers and zeroes are liters. But there are enough losers and zeroes who pay for TF that it's pretty much the same thing, only with an added sense of specialness and entitlement. (A lot of low-batting TFers seem to think it's some kind of shield against ridicule or criticism, as if the price of a Starbucks grande latte makes them smarter.)

What Fark should do to improve this is what Something Awful does: charge a lot more for it, and maybe require it. SA enjoys very good forums, because they all require a fee that costs more than a pizza. TF could be like that, and Fark would do as well with it, or even better. People like me are willing to pay those rates to have a forum free of useless jerks. Again in mathematical terms: I'd happily pay Fark $20 for that, but I won't pay them $5 to hang out with losers who also paid $5 just to feel special.

Regardless, this is all moot now. I quit Fark a short while ago, after a one-sided dispute with the modmins. I say "one-sided" because they couldn't find it in their cajones to even pretend to respect me, and that's ultimately much more offensive to me than what actually happened. What actually happened was that I got a short ban for "namecalling/personal attack," that they never explained. I'm not a very nice person, so the offence as charged is entirely possible, though I've refrained from uglier epithets such as calling people "retards" (which I find offensive anyway). I tracked down two recent comments that had been deleted. Because they'd been deleted, I wasn't able to verify what I actually said, though I vaguely remembered. In the first, I defended a user who'd been attacked by someone else; because the attacker felt in the right, I did this by offering up that there wasn't a lot of available information about the subject, and so the original commenter also likely felt in the right. I'm quite sure that comment included no namecalling or personal attack: I recognised that both sincerely felt they were in the right, and suggested that none of us could really know. The second I remember word for word, partly because it was very short. The person I'd defended responded (clearly before reading my responce to their attacker), very angrily. They'd misunderstood my reply to them as a personal attack, apparently. (The attacker may have also, in that they cited my reply as most of theirs, tacking on an ugly personal attack.) The OC was clearly hurt, and I felt bad about it, but not too much, as they were also very much mistaken about my intent and I felt that was sufficiently clear. I've never had much sympathy for intellectually lazy people.

I contacted the modmins-- no, wait, it's more accurate to say I submitted a query; I can't prove it was ever seen or read, since I got no reply. I requested clarification, though I did not ask for an apology or for the ban to be removed. I just felt they were either confused or trigger-happy. (Probably drunk.) This happened once before, when I submitted a headline that was deemed racist. When I asked for a clarification that time, they wrote back saying it was a misunderstanding, and lifted the ban. In this case, I heard nothing back. To be entirely fair, I gave them only 24 hours to reply, on the logic that they'd acted much faster than that in their original action; surely, I felt, they can be speedy on both ends, and if not, then they're losers and who cares. One big part of my irritation over it all is that I've seen an enormous amount of real, intentional racial prejudice and hateful content on Fark, and it seems to go unpunished. (These 'cryptoracists' as I call them are all cowards, of course, and couch their shiatty remarks in ways that they probably hope offer them some plausible deniability. And for some reason, Fark puts up with this.) Personal attacks and namecalling are also de rigeur on Fark, so it seems very strange to me to be singled out for it, given that I'm pretty sure a disinterested observer would say that I indulge in much less of it than many others do, harsh and unfriendly as I've sometimes been.

In my second communication with them, I asked them to give my UF to someone else I specified. They have not none this. So my UF is burning away without me, they have my money, and no one is using it. Losers. I only did it in order to participate in the early rounds of HOTY. And I only want them to transfer it because I know they won't return my money, even though they banned me the same day I bought it.

I'm not a very nice person to begin with, most people disappoint me, and I don't give a crap what the vast majority of humanity might think of me. I care about worthwhile pursuits and activities that enrich my life in some way. Fark stopped being that a long time ago, and I've been pondering quitting all year. I'd originally planned to make that decision come New Year's, but Fark's modmins brought it on sooner. As far as I'm concerned at this point, Fark can go fark itself. It's proven, over and over, that it does not deserve my participation, and definitely not my money. If they hate me, fine. If they don't care, fine. If they've already forgotten me, fine. Any of those just proves that I was right in leaving. Fark and I are not meant to be.

I haven't joined anything similar, either, such as Reddit. (From what I hear, Fark's nerdier nemesis. Though the few times I've checked it out, I've found it rather childish, even by Fark standards. Just childish in a goofy way, rather than Fark's shiattier way.) I've instead been reading the news, and I'm in a much better mood for it. I'm actually enjoying my life much more now than when I was on Fark every farking day.

In the days right after I told the modmins to go screw, I went through the usual stages of breakup, in rapid succession. I'd read a news story and feel that old itch to submit it. (Ironic, in that TF gives me a leg up on liters who submit.) Initially, I was stymied for what to actually do with my online time. Within a few days, though, I'd settled on just reading some news and then finding more productive things to do. I go for walks with my father. I visit with friends. I participate in charitable activities. I visited farmers who sell hard-to-find products like quince. I made cookies. Not that I wasn't doing these things before. But Fark, besides being a nearly constant source of disappointment and irritation, was also a massive time sink, and soaked up a lot of my time and energy, because I allowed it to -- and often left me in a sour mood. Now I devote that time and energy to things I find much more rewarding. Even my personal relationships are better. I really should have quit when I first thought of it a year ago.

You bunch of loosers have had the entire day with this thread and this is all you have to show for it?Back in my day Last Posts were made of Steel and Wood. When you Last Posted, people heard it for miles around.Big, black, billowing smoke belching from its maw and hot embers cascading to the ground in its wake.

I once saw a three year old child stumble into the path of a Last Post and I'll just say it's a good thing families were large back then.Timmy don't come 'round no more.

I follow link but am unceremoniously told that it is only for subscribers. I have no sense why this linking is to a page on a site that is only available to subscribers. No sense at all. Was there a thing there that I should have saw? Perhaps a heartwarming tale of a young woman's love for her pony and how they survived a fire and a revolution and the horse was stolen by Prussian soldiers but the following year the woman finds the horse in a meadow and it recognizes her and runs to her? Or perhaps a frightening story of a king who steals children and makes them run through his garden while he shoots at them with his hunting bow, all die, except one who escapes and runs from the kingdom to become a monk, only to die of dysentery. But before he dies he becomes one of the greatest text illuminators the monestary ever had, and his work was so beautiful and inspired that it made grown men weep with joy and humility at the beauty inspired by God's word. Except he died and in their humble tradition they take no credit for the work and the young man is utterly forgotten.

Or perhaps it links to a photo page web site of beautiful women. Women of all body types, races and creeds, but each more beautiful and desirable than the next. And some appear distracted or unaware that anyone's looking, while others make come-hither glances at the camera, so alluring, so realistic that you become aroused and your sexual genitals become engorged with the blood so they swell as you view these women. Even women who are Heterosexual will experience the page this way. Unless it is a page showing the spending of the Federal Government of the United States, and breaks it down by agency and department and budgets over time, plus projections of projects and spendings for the future. But for a joke, some will become aroused by this website with budgets! HA HA! Because they find such things sexually exciting. But that is for a joke.

Will I ever know what LP500 or LGT 499 are? IS that the Lesbian Gay Transcurious web club? I do not know.